Short Story Collections - Maryom's ViewThis isn't so much a review post as musings about reading styles. If you're reading a novel you pretty much have to begin at the beginning and carry on to the end - ok you can cheat if you really want to and read the end first but most folk don't. With a collection of stories, though, there's no such need. Occasionally you'll find a volume by a single author where you may gain from reading the stories in the order they're presented but most of the time it doesn't matter too much.
The Mole is a more methodical reader than I am. So, while he's working his way through this collection logically - from beginning to end - I decided to cherry-pick those by my favourite authors first. A Phyllis Eisenstein first - The Last Golden Thread - about a mushroom trader who wants to become a magician - and finds that mushroom trading is necessary along the way. A fun read but incorporating elements I've read in her full length novels.
A Tanith Lee - Evillo the Uncunning - that I didn't finish. Something seemed incredibly silly about it all, particularly names and weird creatures, and then I realised that she was copying Jack Vance's style and that these things sometimes irritate me in his stories.
A Neil Gaiman - the last one in the book, An Invocation of Incuriosity. An intriguing time-travelling tale from the end of the world and a little black box that does that "these are not the droids you're looking for" trick of Obi Wan Kenobi. A perfect way to round off the collection - except I might go back and read the rest now.
The Mole's reviews so far - The True Vintage Of Erzuine Thale by Robert Silverberg
Publisher - Voyager
Genre - Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Story
Buy Songs of the Dying Earth
from Amazon
Genre - Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Story
Buy Songs of the Dying Earth
from Amazon 
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